What  Vivisection  Has  Done 
for  Humanity 


W.    W.    KEEN,   M.D.,   LL.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


DEFENSE    OF   RESEARCH 
PAMPHLET  XIV 

Issued  by  the  Council  on  Defense  of  Medical  Research 
of  the  American  Medical  Association 


'"The  humanity  which  would  prevent  human  suffering  is  a  deeper 
and  truer  humanity  than  the  humanity  which  would  save  paiu  or 
death  to  animals." — Charles  W.  Eliot. 


CHICAGO 

American  Medical  Association 

Five  Hundred  and  Thirty-five   Dearborn   Avenue 

1910 


I 

mer 
tral 

F — .     .-^..^nx  uipciuiicuiauuu  auu  xuoercuiosis,  Dy  L)v. 

E.  L.  Trudeau,  Saranac  Lake,  N.   Y.     16  pages. 

Pamphlet  III. — The  Role  of  Animal  Experimentation  in  the  Diag- 
nosis of  Disease,  by  Dr.  M.  J.  Rosenau,  Washington,  D.  C.     8  pages. 

Pamphlet  IV. — Animal  Experimentation  and  Cancer,  by  Dr. 
James  Ewing,  New  York.     12  pages. 

Pamphlet  V. — The  Ethics  of  Animal  Experimentation,  by  Prof. 
J.  R.  Angell,  Chicago.    8  pages. 

Pamphlet  VI. — Animal  Experimentation :  The  Protection  it  Af- 
fords to  Animals  Themselves  and  its  Value  to  the  Live-Stock 
Industry  of  the  Country,  by  Dr.  V.  A.  Moore,  Ithaca,  N.  Y.  20 
pages. 

Pamphlet  VII. — The  History,  Prevalence  and  Prevention  of 
Rabies,  and  its  Relation  to  Animal  Experimentation,  by  Dr.  L. 
Frothingham.  Boston.     16  pages. 

Pamphlet  VIII. — Importance  of  Animal  Experimentation  in  the 
Development  of  Knowledge  of  Dysentery,  Cholera  and  Typhoid 
Fever,  by  Dr.  M.  W.  Richardson,  Boston.     8  pages. 

Pamphlet  IX. — The  Fruits  of  Medical  Research  with  the  Aid  ot 
Anesthesia  and  Asepticism,  by  Dr.  Charles  W.  Eliot,  Boston.  16 
pages. 

Pamphlet  X. — Animal  Experimentation  in  Relation  to  our  Knowl- 
edge of  Secretions,  especially  Internal  Secretions,  by  Dr.  S.  J. 
Meltzer,  New  York.     32  pages. 

Pamphlet  XI. — Animal  Experimentation  in  Relation  to  Protozoan 
Tropical  Diseases,  by  Dr.  Harry  T.  Marshall,  Charlottesville,  Va. 
20  pages. 

Pamphlet  XII. — Modern  Antiseptic  Surgery  and  the  Role  of 
Experiment  in  its  Discovery  and  Development,  by  Dr.  W.  W.  Keen, 
Philadelphia.     20  pages. 

Pamphlet  XIII. — Animal  Experimentation  in  Relation  to  Prac- 
tical Medical  Knowledge  of  the  Circulation,  by  Dr.  Joseph  Erlanger, 
Madison,  Wis.     40  pages. 

Pamphlet  XIV. — What  Vivisection  Has  Done  for  Humanity,  by 
Dr.  W.  W.  Keen,  Philadelphia.     16  pages. 


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What  Vivisection  Has  Done 
for  Humanity 


W.   W.    KEEN,   M.D.,   LL.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


Pvty,pVSjlX 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2012  with  funding  from 
Duke  University  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/whatvivisectionhOOkeen 


WHAT  VIVISECTION  HAS  DONE  FOR 
HUMANITY* 


W.  W.  KEEN,  M.D.,  LL.D. 

PHILADELPHIA 


PREFACE 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Dr.  Keen,  of 
Philadelphia,  is  universally  regarded  to-day  in 
the  world  of  surgery  as  the  foremost  of  living 
American  surgeons.  The  leading  universities 
and  academies  of  science  of  the  United  States, 
.  England,  France"  and  Germany  have  honored 
him  with  their  degrees  and  honorary  titles, 
and  the  published  works  on  surgery,  written 
and  edited  by  him,  are  accepted  as  standard 
authorities  by  the  profession  in  which  he  has 
gained  such  eminent  distinction.  Dr.  Keen  is, 
therefore,  as  well,  if  not  better,  qualified  to 
to  present  the  advantages  of  vivisection  as  any 
American  writer  on  the  subject. — The  Edi- 
tors of  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal. 

In  1905  I  had  made  all  my  arrangements  to  do  an 
operation  on  a  Thursday  morning.  Among  my  assist- 
ants was  Dr.  C.  On  Wednesday  morning  he  telephoned 
and  said  he  was  not  feeling  very  well  and  that  I  had 
better  engage  some  one  to  take  his  place.  This  I  did, 
giving  no  special  thought  to  the  matter,  supposing  it 
was  an  unimportant  passing  illness.  At  ten  o'clock 
that  same  night  I  was  startled  by  a  telephone  message 
that  if  I  wished  to  see  Dr.  C.  alive  I  must  come  at  once ! 
In  a  few  minutes  I  was  there,  but  he  was  already  un- 
conscious. As  I  sat  beside  him  and  his  weeping  young 
wife,  who  soon  expected  to  become  a  mother,  how  I 
longed  for  some  means  by  which  the  hand  of  death 
could  be   stayed;   but   he   died   in   less   than  thirty-six 

*  Reprinted,  by  permission  of  the  Editor,  from  the  Ladies'  Home 
Journal,  April,  1910. 


28554 


hours  from  the  time  that  he  was  seized  with  cerebro- 
spinal meningitis. 

On  June  16,  1909,  Charles  E.  Hughes,  Jr.,  son  of  the 
governor  of  New  York  State,  and  president  of  his  class, 
was  graduated  at  Brown  University.  A  few  weeks 
earlier  he  had  been  suddenly  seized  with  a  violent  at- 
tack of  the  same  disease — cerebrospinal  meningitis. 
When  some  of  the  fluid  around  his  spinal  cord  was  re- 
moved by  "lumbar  puncture"— that  is,  puncture  of  the 
spinal  canal  in  the  small  of  the  back  by  a  hypodermic 
needle — there  settled  to  the  bottom  of  the  test-tube  a 
half  inch  of  pure  pus  ("matter").  No  medical  man 
familiar  with  this  terrible  disease  would  have  thought 
it  possible  that  he  could  recover  when  such  a  condition 
existed.  But  in  1907,  midway  between  the  death  of 
Dr.  C.  and  the  case  of  young  Hughes,  Drs.  Flexner  and 
Jobling,  of  the  Eockefeller  Institute,  had  discovered 
by  researches  on  animals  alone  a  serum  against  this 
disease.  Three  doses  of  this  serum  were  administered 
also  by  "lumbar  puncture"  to  young  Hughes.  Within 
twenty-four  hours  after  the  first  dose  his  temperature 
fell  to  normal.  The  pus  disappeared  after  the  second 
dose  and  he  soon  recovered  and  was  able  to  take  his 
degree  in  the  presence  of  his  proud  father.  The  trag- 
edy in  the  case  of  Dr.  C.  was  averted,  a  useful  life  was 
spared,  and  a  family  made  happy. 

GREAT  DECREASE  IN  MORTALITY   FROM   CEREBROSPINAL 
MENINGITIS 

In  discovering  this  serum  Dr.  Flexner  experimented 
on  twenty-five  monkeys  and  one  hundred  guinea-pigs. 
Many  of  these  animals  themselves  had  been  cured  by 
the  use  of  the  serum.  Having,  therefore,  found  it  ef- 
fective in  animals  he  proceeded  to  test  it  on  human  be- 
ings. Before  the  introduction  of  the  serum,  medicine 
was  almost  helpless.  Whatever  treatment  was  adopted 
seventy-five  to  ninety  patients  out  of  one  hundred  were 
sure  to  die.  In  two  years  this  serum  has  been  used  in 
this  country  and  in  Europe  in  about  one  thousand  cases. 
In  these  one  thousand  cases  the  mortality  has  dropped 
to  thirty,  twenty,  ten,  and  even  to  seven  in  a  hundred. 
If  we  take  the  mortality  of  the  days  before  the  serum 
treatment  was  used  at  75  per  cent.,  and  the  mortality 
since  it  was  discovered  at  25  per  cent.,  there  is  a  clear 
saving  of  500  human  lives ! 


Not  only  have  500  human  lives  been  saved  in  these 
first  one  thousand  cases,  but  for  all  time  to  come  in 
every  thousand  500  more  human  lives  will  be  saved. 

Moreover,  we  must  not  forget  that  these  thousands 
who  would  die  were  it  not  for  Dr.  Flexner's  serum  had 
families  and  friends  who  would  have  been  filled  with 
sorrow,  and,  in  case  it  was  the  breadwinner  of  the  fam- 
ily whose  life  was  lost,  would  have  had  to  suffer  the 
deprivations  and  pangs  of  poverty. 

Let  me  now  put  a  plain,  straightforward,  common- 
sense  question.  Which  was  the  more  cruel :  Doctor 
Flexner  and  his  assistants  who  operated  on  twenty-five 
monkeys  and  one  hundred  guinea-pigs  with  the  pure 
and  holy  purpose  of  finding  an  antidote  to  a  deadly 
disease  and  with  the  result  of  saving  hundreds,  and,  in 
the  future,  of  thousands  on  thousands  of  human  lives; 
or  the  women  who  were  "fanned  into  fury"  in  their  op- 
position to  all  experiments  on  living  animals  at  the 
Rockefeller  Institute,  "no  matter  how  great  the  antici- 
pated benefit"? 

If  these  misguided  women  had  had  their  way  they 
would  have  nailed  up  the  doors  of  the  Rockefeller  In- 
stitute, would  have  prevented  these  experiments  on  125 
animals,  and  by  doing  so  would  have  ruthlessly  con- 
demned to  death  for  all  future  time  500  human  beings 
in  every  one  thousand  attacked  by  cerebrospinal  menin- 
gitis ! 

If  your  son  or  daughter  falls  ill  with  this  disease  to 
whom  will  you  turn  for  help — to  Flexner  or  to  the  anti- 
vivisectionists  ? 

Of  these  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  animals,  as  a 
rule  those  which  died  became  unconscious  in  the  course 
of  a  few  hours  and  remained  so  for  a  few  hours  more 
till  they  died.  They  suffered  but  little.  When  they 
died  they  left  no  mourning  families  and  friends.  They 
left  undone  no  deeds  of  service  or  of  heroism  to  either 
their  fellows  or  to  the  human  race,  as  the  human  beings 
whose  lives  were  rescued  by  their  death  may  do.  But 
these  deluded  women  had  their  minds  so  centered  on 
the  sufferings  of  these  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
animals  that  their  ears  were  deaf  and  their  hearts 
steeled  against  the  woes  and  the  sufferings  of  thousands 
of  human  beings,  their  families,  and  their  friends.  Is 
this  common-sense?  Are  not  human  beings  "of  more 
value  than  many  sparrows"? 


EXPERIMENTS    IN    SEWING   BLOOD-VESSELS    END-TO-END 

Less  than  two  years  ago  their  first  baby  was  born  to 
a  young  doctor  and  his  wife  in  New  York  City. 
Scarcely  was  the  child  born  before  it  began  to  bleed 
from  the  nose,  the  mouth,  the  gums,  the  stomach  and 
the  bowels.  It  was  a  case  which  we  known  as  "hemor- 
rhage of  the  newborn,"  which  attacks  about  one  baby 
in  every  thousand.  It  is  very  frequently  fatal,  and  in 
treating  it  up  to  that  time  physicians  practically  groped 
in  the  dark,  trying  one  remedy  after  another,  but,  alas, 
too  often  in  vain ! 

The  bleeding  continued.  This  poor  little  baby  soon 
showed  the  pallor  which  accompanies  severe,  loss  of 
blood.  It  lost  all  appetite,  was  suffering  from  high 
fever,  and,  finally,  by  the  fourth  day  the  physician  in 
attendance  told  the  parents  frankly  that  the  child  could 
live  only  a  few  hours.  Then,  in  the  dead  of  the  night 
the  father  wakened  Dr.  Carrel,  one  of  the  assistants  in 
the  Kockefeller  Institute.  The  father  lay  down  along- 
side of  his  firstborn.  The  artery  of  the  pulse  in  the 
father's  arm  was  laid  bare  and  sewed  end-to-end  to  a 
vein  in  his  baby's  leg,  and  the  blood  was  allowed  to  flow 
from  father  to  child.  The  result  was  most  dramatic. 
A  few  minutes  after  the  blood  began  to  flow  into  the 
baby's  veins,  its  white,  transparent  skin  assumed  the 
ruddy  glow  of  health,  the  hemorrhage  from  every  part 
of  the  body  ceased  instantly  and  never  returned,  and, 
as  Dr.  Samuel  Lambert,  who  reports  the  case,  puts  it, 
there  was  no  period  of  convalescene ;  immediately  before 
the  operation  the  baby  was  dying;  immediately  after  the 
operation  it  was  well  and  strong  and  feeding  with  avid- 
ity. That  baby  to-day,  after  two  years,  as  I  know  per- 
sonally, is  a  splendid  specimen  of  a  healthy  child. 

Perhaps  my  readers  may  see  nothing  very  wonderful 
in  this,  but  we  surgeons  know  that  it  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  recent  achievements  in  surgery.  For  many 
years  we  have  been  trying  to  devise  a  method  by  which 
we  could  sew  severed  blood-vessels  end-to-end  without 
danger  to  the  patient.  The  difficulty  has  always  been 
that,  no  matter  what  were  the  methods  employed,  the 
blood  nearly  always  formed  clots  at  the  roughened  ring 
where  the  two  ends  of  the  divided  blood-vessel  were 
sewed  together.  These  clots  passed  up  to  the  heart  and 
into  the  lungs  of  the  patient  and  produced  pneumonia, 
so  that  the  old  method  of  transfusion  of  blood  has  been 


rv 

practically  abandoned  for  years.  Dr.  Carrel  worked 
out  his  new  method  on  the  blood-vessels  of  dead  human 
beings,  and,  when  it  seemed  to  him  to  be  satisfactory, 
put  it  to  the  proof  on  two  living  dogs,  and  then  used  it 
in  living  human  beings.    It  is  now  in  use  everywhere. 

Moreover,  Dr.  Crile,  of  Cleveland,  who  has  so  splen- 
didly enlarged  our  means  of  coping  with  disease,  has 
used  the  same  method  in  another  way.  When  patients 
come  to  him  too  weak  to  be  operated  on  and  ordinary 
tonics  and  food  do  not  strengthen  them,  he  has  trans- 
fused the  blood  from  husband,  father  or  son,  and  thus 
given  the  patient  sufficient  strength  to  bear  the  opera- 
tion. He  has  used  even  a  more  striking  method.  For 
example  when  a  woman  has  to  be  operated  on — say  for 
cancer  of  the  breast — and  is  so  weak  that  the  shock,  the 
anesthetic  and  the  loss  of  blood  would  probably  turn 
the  scale  against  her,  he  has  had  the  husband  lie  down 
alongside  of  her,  has  sewed  the  artery  of  the  pulse  of 
the  husband  to  a  vein  in  his  wife's  leg  and  allowed  the 
blood  to  flow.  In  a  few  minutes,  when  she  has  become 
strong  enough,  he  has  etherized  her  and  proceeded  with 
the  operation,  starting  or  stopping  the  flow  of  blood 
according  to  the  varying  needs  of  the  patient.  At  the 
end  of  the  operation,  through  the  new  life-blood  that 
has  been  given  her,  the  patient  has  been  in  better  con- 
dition than  when  the  operation  began.  These  methods, 
too,  are  now  in  successful  use  by  other  surgeons. 

Let  me  again  put  the  plain,  straightforward,  com- 
mon-sense question :  Who  is  the  more  cruel :  Dr.  Car- 
rel, in  devising  this  life-saving  method  of  transfusion 
of  blood  by  experimenting  on  two  living  dogs,  and  sav- 
ing through  himself  and  other  surgeons  scores  of  lives 
already,  and  even  thousands  in  the  future;  or  the 
women  who  would  shackle  him,  shut  up  the  Eockefeller 
Institute  and  thrust  these  poor  patients  into  their 
graves?  Does  not  the  work  of  Drs.  Flexner,  Jobling 
and  Carrel  and  their  assistants  not  only  justify  the  ex- 
istence of  the  Eockefeller  Institute,  but  also  bid  us  tell 
them  Godspeed  in  their  mission  of  mercy,  and  give 
them  and  those  engaged  in  similar  blessed  work  all 
over  the  world  our  confidence,  encouragement  and  aid? 
Is  it  just,  is  it  fair,  is  it  Christian  to  call  such  an  insti- 
tution a  "hell  at  close  range,"  as  the  Eockefeller  Insti- 
tute is  called  in  a  pamphlet  written  by  a  woman  and 
distributed  by  antivivisectionists  ? 


ANTISEPTIC   EXPERIMENTS   WERE   FIRST   TRIED   ON 
ANIMALS 

I  suppose  that  in  this  day  of  general  intelligence 
scarcely  any  person,  if  he  or  she  had  to  submit  to  an 
operation,  would  be  willing  to  have  it  done  by  a  sur- 
geon who  did  not  use  antiseptic  methods.  These 
methods  we  owe  to  Lord  Lister  of  London,  still  living 
in  his  eighty-third  year.  Few  of  my  readers,  however, 
know  how  enormous  the  contrast  is  between  the  days 
before  Lister's  discoveries  and  the  present.  I  was  grad- 
uated in  medicine  in  1862.  The  antiseptic  method  was 
adopted  by  various  surgeons,  we  may  say  roughly,  be- 
tween the  years  1875  and  1880.  Prior  to  1876  I  prac- 
ticed the  old  surgery,  but  ever  since  then  the  new  anti- 
septic method.  I  passed  through  the  horrible  surgery 
of  the  Civil  War,  when  blood-poisoning,  erysipelas,  lock- 
jaw, hospital  gangrene  and  all  the  other  fearful  septic 
conditions  were  every-day  affairs.  In  five  hundred  and 
five  cases  of  lockjaw  during  the  Civil  War  four  hundred 
and  fifty-one  patients  died.  In  wounds  of  the  intestines 
the  mortality  was  ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred.  In 
sixty-six  cases  of  amputation  at  the  hip-joint  fifty-five 
patients  died.  In  one  hundred  and  fifty-five  cases  of 
trephining  ninety-five  patients  died.  After  the  war  for 
some  years  I  was  an  assistant  of  Dr.  Washington  L. 
Atlee.  A  more  careful  surgeon  I  never  saw,  but  two  out 
of  every  three  of  his  patients  died.  There  are  now  many 
surgeons  who  can  show  series  of  hundreds  and  even 
thousands  of  cases  of  ovariotomy  and  other  abdominal 
operations  with  a  mortality  of  only  five  in  a  hundred, 
and  some  of  only  one  in  a  hundred.  After  "clean"  oper- 
ations— that  is,  with  no  "matter"  present — blood-poison- 
ing, lockjaw  and  erysipelas  are  well-nigh  unknown,  and 
I  have  not  seen  a  single  case  of  hospital  gangrene  in  the 
thirty-five  years  since  I  adopted  the  antiseptic  method. 

One  of  the  most  common  operations  is  amputation  of 
the  breast  for  cancer,  in  which  now  we  do  far  more  ex- 
tensive operations  than  formerly.  These  operations  are 
followed  by  permanent  cure  in  more  than  one-half  of 
the  patients  operated  on  early,  and  rarely  more  than  one 
or  two  women  in  every  hundred  die.  Eecovery  also  fol- 
lows in  a  few  days  and  not  seldom  with  but  little  pain, 
instead  of  several  weeks  or  even  months  of  great  suffer- 
ing as  before  the  days  of  antisepsis. 


All  of  this  wonderful  improvement  we  owe  to  Lord 
Lister  and  the  new  science  of  bacteriology  which  treats 
of  "bacteria"  or  "germs."  Both  Lister's  work  and  that 
of  the  bacteriologist  are  and  must  be  absolutely  founded 
finally  on  experiments  on  animals.  The  laboratory  was 
of  use,  but,  in  order  to  be  absolutely  certain  that  he  was 
right  he  had  to  experiment  on  a  few  animals — the  only 
possible  way  of  achieving  positive  knowledge. 

Who,  I  ask,  are  the  more  humane :  Lord  Lister  and 
other  surgeons  who  have  made  these  life-giving,  pain- 
saving  experiments  on  animals,  or  those  who — if  they 
had  succeeded  in  the  past  in  prohibiting  such  experi- 
ments— would  have  compelled  surgeons  in  1910  to  con- 
tinue to  use  the  same  old,  horrible,  dirty  methods  of 
surgery  as  in  the  days  before  Lister,  and  thus  to  offer 
up  hecatombs  of  human  lives  to  the  Moloch  of  antivivi- 
section?  Which  method  will  any  man  of  common  sense 
or  any  woman  with  a  human  heart  choose  ? 

HOW  THE  SCOUEGE  OF  MOTHEEHOOD  HAS  BEEX  BANISHED 

Even  in  surgery  it  is  doubtful  if  a  more  wonderful  im- 
provement has  been  realized  than  in  our  maternity  hospi- 
tals and  in  private  obstetric  practice  as  a  direct  result 
of  the  work  of  Pasteur  and  Lister.  Well  do  I  remember 
as  a  young  man  every  now  and  then  an  outbreak  of  that 
frightful  and  fatal  puerperal  or  "child-bed"  fever  in  our 
maternity  hospitals.  Almost  every  woman  who  then  en- 
tered such  a  hospital  was  doomed  to  suffer  an  attack  of 
the  fever,  and  its  mortality  sometimes  ran  up  to  seventy- 
five,  or  even  more,  out  of  every  hundred  mothers.  Often 
such  hospitals  had  to  be  closed  till  the  then  unknown 
poison  disappeared.  Not  a  few  obstetricians  had  to  quit 
practice  entirely  for  weeks  because  every  woman  they  at- 
tended fell  ill  of  the  disease  and  many,  many  died.  Fin- 
ally Pasteur  appeared  on  the  field.  In  1878,  in  a  discus- 
sion on  puerperal  fever  at  the  Paris  Academy  of  Medi- 
cine, after  a  member  had  eloquently  discussed  various 
alleged  causes  of  these  epidemics,  Pasteur  interrupted 
him  and  said :  "All  this  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  cause 
of  these  epidemics.  It  is  the  doctors  who  transport  the 
microbe  from  a  sick  woman  to  a  healthy  woman."  When 
the  speaker  responded  that  he  feared  they  would  never 
find  this  microbe  Pasteur  immediately  advanced  to  the 
blackboard,  drew  the  picture  of  what  we  know  as  the 
"streptococcus"  and  said:     "This  is  the  cause  of  the 


10 

disease."  This  recognition  of  the  streptococcus  as  the 
cause  of  puerperal  fever  and  the  consequent  adoption 
of  antiseptic  methods  have  practically  abolished  puer- 
peral fever  and  reduced  the  mortality  in  maternity  cases 
to  less  than  one  in  a  hundred. 

All  this  we  owe  absolutely  to  experiment  on  animals. 
Nothing  else  could  have  given  us  the  knowledge.  Even 
the  horrible  experiments  that  were  being  made  by  doc- 
tors who  were  ignorantly  spreading  the  poison  all 
around  them,  even  these  were  not  sufficient  to  open  our 
eyes  to  the  real  cause  of  the  disease.  The  laboratory 
test-tubes  and  experiments  on  animals  were  the  chief 
means  by  which  this  scourge  of  motherhood  has  been 
banished. 

EXPERIMENTS   ON   MAN   HAVE   VANQUISHED   YELLOW 
FEVER 

In  addition  to  all  these  another  fearful  disease,  yel- 
low fever,  has  also  been  abolished  by  experiment  which 
was  necessary  for  the  final  convincing  proof.  I  need 
not  repeat  at  length  the  frightful  ravages  of  this  ter- 
rible pestilence  in  days  gone  by.  Cuba  was  never  free 
from  it  for  nearly  two  centuries  until  the  American 
Commission  showed  how  to  get  rid  of  it.  The  Panama 
Canal  Zone  had  perhaps  the  worst  reputation  in  the 
world  as  a  graveyard  for  strangers,  and  now  for  four 
years  not  a  single  case  of  yellow  fever  has  originated 
there !  Colonel  Gorgas  has  made  the  Panama  Canal  a 
possibility. 

I  wish  that  every  one  might  read  that  most  interest- 
ing little  book,  "Walter  Eeed  and  Yellow  Fever,"  by 
Dr.  Howard  A.  Kelly,  and  see  the  wonderful  methods 
by  which  this  scourge  of  humanity  has  been  abolished. 
When  one  thinks  of  the  enormous  difficulties  of  the 
problem  the  wonder  is  that  it  was  ever  solved.  There 
are  about  400  hundred  varieties  of  mosquito.  Only 
one  of  them  carries  the  poison  of  yellow  fever.  Of  this 
variety  only  the  female  carries  the  poison,  and  this 
female  mosquito  must  have  bitten  a  patient  sick  with 
yellow  fever  during  the  first  three  days  of  his  illness, 
or  she  could  not  become  infected.  Moreover,  after  in- 
fection, the  poison,  whatever  it  is,  does  not  develop  in 
the  body  of  the  female  mosquito  for  about  twelve  days. 
These  facts  were  thought  to  be  true,  but  there  was  no 


11 

positive  proof.  A  very  large  number,  perhaps  the  ma- 
jority, of  yellow-fever  experts  still  believed  that  the 
disesase  was  carried  in  clothing,  bedding,  etc.  To  dis- 
prove this  experiments  were  tried  first  of  all  by  doctors 
on  themselves.  They  slept  in  the  beds  in  which  yellow- 
fever  patients  had  died,  and  in  their  very  clothes,  night 
after  night — clothes  soiled  with  their  black  vomit, 
urine  and  feces.  At  other  times  doctors  have  actually 
swallowed  the  black  vomit,  tried  to  inoculate  themselves 
by  putting  some  of  it  into  their  eyes,  by  hypodermic 
injections,  etc.,  in  the  vain  attempt  to  discover  the 
cause  of  the  disease  and  the  means  by  which  it  was 
spread,  hoping  in  this  way  to  discover  the  means  of 
preventing  it.  Surely  self-sacrifice  could  go  no  further. 
Yes,  it  could  go  further.  One  more  step  was  requisite. 
The  only  way  to  give  the  absolute  final  proof  was  for 
a  well  man  to  be  bitten  by  a  mosquito  known  to  be  in- 
fected. Dr.  Carroll,  of  the  United  States  Army,  was 
the  first  one  who  offered  himself.  Other  men  followed 
— doctors,  soldiers  and  others.  Several  lost  their  lives, 
among  them  Dr.  Lazear  at  the  beginning  of  a  most 
promising  career.  His  tablet  in  the  Johns  Hopkins 
Hospital,  in  the  fine  words  written  by  President  Eliot, 
records  that  "With  more  than  the  courage  and  the  de- 
votion of  the  soldier  he  risked  and  lost  his  life  to  show 
how  a  fearful  pestilence  is  communicated  and  how  its 
ravages  may  be  prevented." 

It  is  often  said  that  such  experimental  work  brutal- 
izes men.  Let  us  read  a  letter  from  Dr.  Eeed  to  his 
wife,  remembering,  also,  that  the  same  high  and  holy 
purposes  animate  Doctors  Flexner,  Carrol,  Crile  and 
other  experimenters : 

Quemado,  Cuba,  11:50  p.  m.,  Dec.  31,  1900. 
Only  ten  minutes  of  the  old  century  remain.  Here  have 
I  been  sitting,  reading  that  most  wonderful  book,  "LaRoche 
on  Yellow  Fever,"  written  in  1853.  Forty-seven  years  later 
it  has  been  permitted  to  me  and  my  assistants  to  lift  the 
impenetrable  veil  that  has  surrounded  the  causation  of  this 
most  wonderful,  dreadful  pest  of  humanity  and  to  put  it  on 
a  rational  and  scientific  basis.  I  thank  God  that  this  has 
been  accomplished  during  the  latter  days  of  the  old  century. 
May  its  cure  be  wrought  out  in  the  early  days  of  the  new! 
The  prayer  that  has  been  mine  for  twenty  years,  that  I  might 
be  permitted  in  some  way  or  at  some  time  to  do  something 
to  alleviate  human  suffering,  has  been  granted! 


3S554 


V 


12 

This  prayer  of  Beed — that  its  cure  might  be  wrought 
out  in  the  new,  the  twentieth  century — has  been  abund- 
antly realized  and  yellow  fever  is  now  a  vanquished  foe. 

Unfortunately,  the  lower  animals  cannot  be  infected 
with  yellow  fever.  If  they  could  be  Lazear  and  the 
other  victims  would  have  been  saved.  But  they,  yield- 
ing up  their  lives  as  leaders  of  a  forlorn  hope  in  the 
battle  against  disease,  have  made  it  possible  to  free  the 
world  from  this  dreadful  scourge.  Never  was  there  a 
finer  exhibition  of  courage! 

WHY   MODERN"   SURGERY  IS  SUCCESSFUL  IN   BRAIN  DIS- 
ORDERS 

A  few  years  ago  I  was  called  to  Annapolis  to  see  a 
young  man  who  had  been  injured  in  a  football  game. 
He  was  evidently  swiftly  going  to  his  grave.  He  had 
certain  peculiar  symptoms,  which,  in  the  light  of  cere- 
bral localization — that  is,  the  fact  that  certain  definite 
portions  of  the  surface  of  the  brain  have  each  a  certain 
definite  function — I  believed  to  be  due  to  a  clot  of  blood 
inside  of  his  head  above  his  left  ear.  There  was  a  bruise, 
not  above  the  ear,  but  at  the  outer  end  of  the  left  eyebrow. 
Before  1885  I  should  have  opened  his  skull  under  the 
bruise — apparently  the  almost  certain  point  of  injury — 
would  have  failed  to  find  the  clot,  and  he  would  surely 
have  died.  Instead  of  this  I  made  a  trap-door  opening 
3  inches  away  from  this  bruise,  removed  nine  table- 
spoonfuls  of  clotted  blood,  closed  the  wound  so  that  his 
skull  was  as  firm  as  ever,  and  he  recovered,  continued 
his  studies,  was  graduated  from  the  Naval  Academy. 
Lately  he  has  heroically  given  up  his  life  at  the  call  of 
duty.  Had  it  not  been  for  experiments  on  animals 
which  had  definitely  fixed  certain  spots  in  the  brain  as 
the  centers  for  movements  of  the  hand,  arm,  shoulder, 
head,  face,  etc.,  it  would  have  been  utterly  impossible 
for  me  to  save  his  life.  This  is  but  one  of  hundreds  of 
similar  cases  in  which  modern  surgery  deals  with  tumors 
of  the  brain,  hemorrhage  inside  of  the  skull  and  many 
other  disorders,  and  deals  with  them  successfully. 

THE  GREAT  BLESSINGS  OE  ANTITOXIN  IN  DIPTHERIA 

I  have  heard  the  following  pitiful  story  from  one  of 
my  colleagues.  He  and  a  young  mother  stood  by  the 
bedside  of  her  only  child.  The  child,  in  the  throes  of 
diphtheria,  was  clutching    at    its    throat  and  gasping 


13 

vainly  for  breath.  Suddenly  the  mother  flung  herself 
on  the  floor  at  the  doctor's  feet  in  an  agony  of  tears,  en- 
treating him  to  save  her  child.  But  alas !  it  was  impos- 
sible. Had  this  case  ocurred  a  few  years  later,  however, 
when  the  blessed  antitoxin  for  diphtheria  had  been  dis- 
covered (solely  by  animal  experimentation),  this  remedy 
would  have  been  given  early ;  and  almost  certainly  within 
a  few  hours  the  membrane  would  have  softened  and  dis- 
appeared, and  that  life,  precious  beyond  rubies,  might 
have  been  saved. 

In  those  early  dreadful  days  the  only  comfort  we 
could  give  such  distracted  mothers — possibly  some  of 
them  may  read  these  very  lines — was  that  "it  was  God's 
will."  Yes !  Then,  possibly,  it  was  God's  will ;  but  now, 
thank  God,  it  is  not  His  will.  One  might  as  well  say 
it  is  God's  will  that  thousands  should  die  from  small- 
pox when  vaccination  will  protect  them ;  that  other  thou- 
sands should  die  from  typhoid  fever  when  a  pure  water- 
supply  and  the  banishment  of  the  fly  will  prevent  it; 
that  thousands  of  women  should  die  from  puerperal 
fever  when  sterile  hands  and  sterile  instruments  will 
save  them ! 

Let  me  give  a  table  of  some  official  reports  showing 
in  nineteen  American  and  European  cities  the  mortality 
in  every  100,000  inhabitants  from  diphtheria  in  1891 — 
that  is  to  say,  before  the  use  of  the  antitoxin  of  diph- 
theria— and  in  1905,  when  its  use  had  become  general. 
Being  official  and  from  ninteen  cities  in  America  and 
Europe,  its  accuracy  can  hardly  be  assailed. 

TABLE    OF    MORTALITY    FROM    DIPHTHERIA 

Per  100,000  Inhabitants. 

1894.  1905. 

New   York 158  38 

Philadelphia 128  32 

Baltimore 50  20 

Boston 180  22 

Brooklyn 173  43 

Pittsburg-.     64  26 

London 66  12.2 

Paris ' 40  6 

Vienna 114  19 

These  nine  and  ten  other  large  cities  taken  together 
average  as  follows;  in  1894,  79.9,  and  in  1905,  19,  per 
100,000  inhabitants — that  is  to  say,  in  these  nineteen 
cities  the  average  death  rate  in  1905  was  less  than  one- 
fourth  of  the  rate  before  the  introduction  of  the  serum 
treatment. 


14 


VIVISECTION    IS    NEVER    UNNECESSARILY    CRUEL 

The  alleged  atrocities  so  vividly  described  in  antivivi- 
section  literature  are  fine  instances  of  "yellow  journal- 
ism," and  the  quotations  from  medical  men  are  often 
misleading.  Thus,  Sir  Frederick  Treves,  the  eminent 
English  surgeon,  is  quoted  as  an  opponent  of  vivisection 
in  general.  In  spite  of  a  denial  published  seven  years 
ago  the  quotation  still  does  frequent  duty.  I  know  per- 
sonally and  intimately  Horsley,  Ferrier,  Carrel,  Flex- 
ner,  Crile,  Cushing  and  others,  and  I  do  not  know  men 
men  who  are  kinder  and  more  lovable.  That  they  would 
be  guilty  of  deliberate  cruelty  I  would  no  more  believe 
than  that  my  own  brother  would  have  been. 

Moreover,  I  have  seen  their  experiments,  and  can  vouch 
personally  for  the  fact  that  they  give  to  these  animals 
exactly  the  same  care  that  I  do  to  a  human  being.  Were 
it  otherwise  their  experiments  would  fail  and  utterly 
discredit  them.  Whenever  an  operation  would  be  pain- 
ful an  anesthetic  is  always  given.  This  is  dictated  not 
only  by  humanity,  but  by  two  other  valid  considerations : 
first,  long  and  delicate  operations  cannot  be  done  prop- 
erly on  a  struggling,  fighting  animal  any  more  than  they 
could  be  done  on  a  struggling  fighting  human  being, 
and  so  again  their  experiments  would  be  failures;  and 
second,  should  any  one  try  an  experiment  without  giv- 
ing ether  he  would  soon  discover  that  dogs  have  teeth 
and  cats  have  claws.  Moreover,  it  will  surprise  many 
of  my  readers  to  learn  that  of  the  total  number  of  ex- 
periments done  in  one  year  in  England  97  per  cent, 
were  hypodermic  injections  and  only  3  per  cent,  could 
be  called  painful ! 

If  any  one  will  read  the  report  of  the  recent  British 
Eoyal  commission  on  Vivisection  "he  would  find,"  says 
Lord  Cromer,  "that  there  was  not  a  single  case  of  ex- 
treme and  unnecessary  cruelty  brought  forward  by  the 
Antivivisection  Society  which  did  not  hopelessly  break 
down  under  cross-examination." 

EXPERIMENTAL   RESEARCH    IS    OUR    DUTY 

In  view  of  what  I  have  written  above — and  many 
times  as  much  could  be  added — is  it  any  wonder  that 
I  believe  it  to  be  a  common-sense,  a  scientific,  a  moral 
and  a  Christian  duty  to  promote  experimental  research? 
To  hinder  it,  and,  still  more,  to  stop  it  would  be  a 
crime  against  the  human  race  itself,  and  also  against 


15 

animals,  which  have  benefited  almost  as  much  as  man 
from  these  experiments. 

What  do  our  antivivisection  friends  propose  as  a  sub- 
stitute? Nothing  except  clinical — that  is,  bedside — 
and  post-mortem  observations.  These  have  been  in  use 
for  two  thousand  years  and  have  not  given  us  results 
to  be  compared  for  a  moment  with  the  results  gained 
by  experimental  research  in  the  last  fifty,  or  even  the 
last  twenty-five  years. 

Finally,  compare  what  the  friends  and  the  foes  o*f 
research  have  done  within  my  own  professional  life- 
time. The  friends  of  research  have  given  us  antiseptic 
surgery  and  its  wonderful  results  in  every  region  and 
organ  of  the  body;  have  abolished,  or  nearly  abolished, 
lockjaw,  blood-poisoning,  erysipelas,  hydrophobia,  yel- 
low fever;  have  taught  us  how  to  make  maternity  al- 
most absolutely  safe;  how  to  reduce  the  mortality  of 
diphtheria  and  cerebrospinal  meningitis  to  one-fourth 
and  one-third  of  their  former  death-rate,  and  have 
saved  thousands  of  the  lower  animals  from  their  own 
special  diseases. 

What  have  the  foes  of  research  done  for  humanity? 
Held  meetings,  called  the  friends  of  research  many  bad 
names  and  spread  many  false  and  misleading  state- 
ments. Not  one  disease  has  been  abolished,  not  one 
has  had  its  mortality  lessened,  not  a  single  human  life 
has  been  saved  by  anything  they  have  done.  On  the 
contrary,  had  they  had  their  way,  puerperal  fever  and 
the  other  hideous  diseases  named  above,  and  many 
others,  would  still  be  stalking  through  the  world,  slay- 
ing young  and  old,  right  and  left — and  the  antivivisec- 
tionists  would  rightly  be  charged  with  this  cruel  result. 


OTHER    PAMPHLETS   OF  INTEREST  TO 
THE    PUBLIC 


MEDICAL  INSTITUTES 
The  Wisconsin  Medical  Institute,  of  Milwaukee. 
The  Boston  Medical  Institute  or  The  Bellevue 
Medical  Institute,  of  Chicago. 

The  Epileptic  Institute  Company,  of  Cincinnati. 

CONSUMPTION  AND  CANCER  CURES 

Aicsol,  of  St.  Louis. 

The  International  Institute,  of  Chicago. 

Nature's  Creation,  of  Columbus. 

"Rupert  Wells,"  of  St.  Louis.  Also  in  the  same 
pamphlet,  the  Wilson  Consumption  Cure  and  the 
Soluble  Sulphur  Company.     Illustrated. 

A  Trio  of  Cancer  Fakes  :  Dealing  with  the  Dr. 
Curry  Cancer  Cure  Company  of  Lebanon,  Ohio,  the 
Dr.  Benjamin  P.  Bye  Sanitarium  of  Indianapolis, 
Ind.,  and  Dr.  L.  T.  Leach  of  Indianapolis.    Illustrated. 

A  Duo  of  Cancer  Fakes  :  Dealing  with  Dr.  and 
Mrs.  Chamlee  &  Co.,  of  St.  Louis,  and  W.  O.  Bye  of 
Kansas   City.      Illustrated. 

Toxo-Absorbent  Company  of  Rochester.  Illustrated. 

MISCELLANEOUS 
The  Viavi   Treatment,  of  San  Francisco. 
The   American  College  of  Mechan'o-Therapy,  of 
Chicago. 


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The  Boy's  Venereal  Peril  :  A  carefully-written, 
plain-speaking,  uplifting  letter  to  boys,  which  will 
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The  Great  American  Fraud,  by  Samuel  Hopkins 
,  Adams.  Articles  on  the  Nostrum  Evil  and  Quacks. 
Reprinted  from  Collier's  Weekly.  Paper  cover.  65 
illustrations.  170  pages.  Prices :  One  copy,  10 
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Stamps  acceptable  for  amounts  under  fifty  cents. 

AMERICAN    MEDICAL    ASSOCIATION 
535  Dearborn  Avenue.  Chicago,  Illinois 


HISTORICAL 
COLLECTION 

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